Brick is a rarity in really low budget independent film, its exciting and dynamic. To break it down its a film noir set in a southern California high school. Film noir is the most malleable genre out there. You can do comedy, romance, action and now a high school movie all within this shroud of violence, sexy women and drugs.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan Frye a smart fast talking high school student who isnt above breaking a jocks nose in order to find his missing ex-girlfriend. I got a chance to talk with Brick writer/director, Rian Johnson, who rightfully won the Sundance Film Festivals Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision.

Daniel Robert Epstein: One of the things thats interesting about Brick is that they dont make film noirs without humor anymore. The only humor in Brick comes from the fact that they are high school students. Did you want to make something that was so nihilistic?

Rian Johnson: Not particularly. I hope theres actually some degree of humor in there.

DRE: But the humor doesnt come out of the noir aspect.

RJ: Exactly. The origin of this whole thing was the novels of Dashiell Hammett. Thats where it all started for me and if you go back and look at his novels its got that same humor that you see in a lot of darker stuff like the Coen Brothers, where its funny but in the context of the world. The biggest example would be in The Maltese Falcon. The scenes with Sydney Greenstreet, who is the heavy, are hilarious. Theyre like comedy scenes really. But at the same time its not hilarious in the way that steps you out of the world, because its completely at peace with whats going on in the story.

DRE: But did you have the beats set up such as when the head of the crime family is being served milk and cookies by his mom. You knew that was going to get a laugh.

RJ: Yeah, definitely.

DRE: But you dont play it for laughs.

RJ: It was very important not to. A big part of what my goal with this was to do a straight up detective movie. I knew that we were playing a very dangerous game by setting it in this high school world because that inherently lends itself to parody and humor like Bugsy Malone. If anything I probably did overcompensate by wanting to play it completely safe. The humor seeps in when you play it totally straight.

DRE: What made you decide to set it in high school?

RJ: The decision to set it in that weird high school world came from wanting to give it a different set of visual cues because everyone is so familiar with film noir. The instant you see images of men in hats in shadowy alleyways, its very easy to turn your brain off to a certain extent and just chalk it up to being a homage to older better films. Im always a little bit nervous when I tell people the central conceit of the film because Im afraid that theyre going to think that the high school twist is some sort of post-modern deconstruction of the genre, when its not that way at all. Its actually a way of being able to take a much more straightforward approach.

DRE: Brick feels like a student film, in a good and very pure way.

RJ: I take that as a big compliment. It was shot at my hometown high school which is very freaky. Thats years and years of therapy right there. I grew up making movies. Thats what Ive been doing since I was 12 and throughout high school I was running around with a video camera. Thats what I did to avoid social situations so there was something about the experience of making Brick that very much pulled me back to that world. I was back in my high school making movies with a group of friends.

DRE: Does all the anger in the movie come from high school too?

RJ: Of course. Everyone wants to break the jocks nose. Those two worlds of detective movie plus high school slid very easily on top of each other in a lot of different ways such as the nihilistic anger you mentioned. Thats something thats very present and very rooted in the archetypal detective protagonist of detective fiction. That seen it all, disconnected from the world in doing his job type of thing. That connects to the loner archetype that you have in high school and the way a lot of us envisioned ourselves in high school. Everyone likes to think of themselves as outside of that stratified social world.

DRE: What made you decide to start off Brick with a scene from the middle of the movie? I assumed it was a scene from the end.

RJ: Id be interested in knowing how you reacted to that.

DRE: You didnt have to do that but since it is a noir, you could do it just as easily. It was good because walking to the theater I didnt know if this was the kind of movie where people would die.

RJ: It served a couple purposes and it is a Sunset Boulevard type thing.

DRE: I wasnt sure who the girl was supposed to be.

RJ: Youre supposed to be confused. Also I think the fact hes sitting there looking at a dead girl on a creek established from the very start that this isnt a high school movie. As opposed to jumping into something where all of a sudden youre in high school with locker cages and corridors but now youre ramped up to see murders and violence. I felt it was better to lay the cards on the table.

DRE: Was it difficult or expensive to get Velvet Underground's Sister Ray to play over the credits?

RJ: Our budget was just under 500 grand and for Sister Ray they wanted $60,000 and we talked them down to $30,000. I got to the point where I got so passionate about having that song at the end, I wrote a letter to John Cale and Lou Reed begging them to let me put it in which Im sure their assistants read and had pity on me. Since there were hardly any songs in the whole movie, I wanted to punch it home with that at the end.

DRE: I liked the jazzy score.

RJ: Yeah. Its like a junkyard jazz score.

DRE: You obviously had a very strong vision for this movie. How happy were you with the final cut?

RJ: I was thrilled. I can say that and not feel like an asshole because the reason I was thrilled with it is because of how different it was from how I originally envisioned it. I had a very clear idea going into it and to a large degree it did come out matching that but the things that excite me at the end of the day is the stuff that still surprises me. Thats why after seeing it 500 times I can still sit down and watch it.

DRE: What movie did you see Joseph in that made you want to cast him?

RJ: The only movie Id seen him in was Manic with Don Cheadle. Id never seen his TV show and hed just finished shooting Mysterious Skin but it wasnt cut yet.

DRE: Have you seen Mysterious Skin yet?

RJ: Yeah its amazing. I think Joe is really going to surprise a lot of people in the coming years. His trajectory is going to be a really intelligent one. Hes such a smart guy and hes so level headed and he knows his taste in projects. One benefit of him working since he was young is that he is only in his mid-20s but yet he has such a highly developed sense of where he wants to go and how he wants to get there.

DRE: Hes gone beyond working with edgy directors. He works with amazing people.

RJ: The nice thing about him is he isnt like Fuck the mainstream, Im doing edgy stuff. Hes just interested in picking good projects. Im not afraid to hear if hes going to do a 50 million dollar movie because I know itll be something interesting.

DRE: I was given a glossary of terms for the movie Brick. Of course you can figure out most of them from the context they are used in the movie. How did you come up with the language?

RJ: The slang in the movie is really dense but its just mish mash. Theres a lot of it from Hammett, the 50s, modern day stuff and a bunch I just made up. The only thing in my mind was, does it sound cool. If I couldnt think of something that sounded cool enough I would make something up.

DRE: When you came to certain beats while writing Brick would you have to think of what would happen next in a noir or did it come naturally?

RJ: I really tried to avoid thinking what would happen next in a noir because then it would start to feel like a homage. When working with the cast and crew I felt I could make fresh creative choices and not play archetypes. It was important for each of them that they found something about the character that let them bring it to life.

DRE: What made you think of Lukas Haas for the crime boss?

RJ: We found him very close to the end of the shoot. Joe and I drove up to his place up in the hills. We had to go up this twisty dark road and then go into this house much like a kingpins house. I hope he does more character roles like this. Its really fun to see him have something where he can be a bit more bizarre and cunning.

DRE: Who was Gary Trueman [played by Richard Roundtree] in the film noir canon?

RJ: He was the chief of police that the detectives got to go in and deal with eventually. That scene is basically verbatim straight out of The Big Sleep. Thats a scene that is the closest we get to very directly tipping our hat to our origins.

DRE: After I see a film noir I really want to punch someone in the face. I want to just sneak up on someone and clock them.

RJ: Yeah, clock them in the kisser. Theres something cathartic about that.

DRE: Seeing that world just makes you want to do something bad to somebody else.

RJ: My goal as a filmmaker is to make people do bad things to other people in life. If I can accomplish that one thing, Im all good.

DRE: A lot of independent filmmakers get offered the most bizarre things after having success. I know Eli Roth got offered Dukes of Hazzard after Cabin Fever. How about you?

RJ: Its bizarre to see what people toss us based on this movie. Its nice for me in a way because I actually like the career path I want to take. I want to just keep writing and making my own movies. Im not looking to be a working director so its easier and very nice that I dont have to read scripts and deal with that world.

DRE: So you have no desire to even read scripts.

RJ: Not at this point. Ive written my next movie, called The Brothers Bloom, and I know what the next one is after that. The career trajectories that I want to try to emulate are like the Coen Bros.

DRE: The Coen Bros went and tried to do a big picture movie with The Hudsucker Proxy.

RJ: There are some things about Hudsucker that I still enjoy.

DRE: I saw on your website that youre taking pictures across the country for the movie.

RJ: Its weird, I have this little personal site of mine and Ive been just tossing stuff out there for my friends over the years. Now people are starting to find it, which is strange. The Brothers Bloom is a globetrotting con man adventure movie about two brothers who are con men and their last job is on this one woman. Im really excited about it.

DRE: How old are the characters?

RJ: Like mid-30s.

DRE: So no part for Joseph Gordon-Levitt?

RJ: No, I wish I could put Joe in the time machine and zap him forward ten years. I would be in heaven. But as proud as I am of Brick and just 100 percent overjoyed with the process of making it, it was something I wrote in my early 20s. Im 32 now and it is really invigorating to be working on something I wrote a year ago. Its really where my hearts at right now.

DRE: After working on Brick so long was it daunting at all to sit down and write that second movie?

RJ: Not at all. Movies are all Ive really done my whole life so if I get a chance to keep on making them, I will.

DRE: Why do you think Michael Bays website is the funniest site on the net?

RJ: Have you read the recently asked questions? People ask him what kind of car he drives. Theres something hilarious about that.

DRE: Its easy because hes such a target [laughs].

RJ: Its probably a little too easy. I probably should take that down but I wont.

DRE: Where are you from originally?

RJ: I went to junior high and high school in San Clemente [California] but Colorado for grade school.

DRE: Was your family in the movie business?

RJ: No, not at all. I was the first one in the family to veer into that. But the way we funded the movie was scraping money together from friends and family. Theyre all really big movie fans and really supportive.

DRE: What movies made you want to pick up a camera?

RJ: It was the same cloud of movies that everyone about our age likes. Its Raiders [of the Lost Ark], Star Wars, The Dark Crystal. But some of my best memories are watching La Strada with my grandfather and my dad showing me Raging Bull when I was in high school.

DRE: What film school did you go to?

RJ: I went to USC.

DRE: So many people come out of there, how was it?

RJ: I had a lot of fun there and I met all my best friends there. To a large degree the reason you see so many people coming out of it is just because its in Los Angeles and the people who come out of it stick around in LA and work eventually.

DRE: Did you grow up with Lucky McKee?

RJ: No, we met in the dorms at film school.

DRE: Did Lucky give you notes on Brick at all?

RJ: I showed it to him when we were in the cutting stage. Its a fun thing. I met a group of friends in film school, Lucky was among them and my cinematographer Steve Yedlin is as well. Weve all stuck together.

DRE: He shot May as well.

RJ: Yeah. May was the first movie that our group of friends all got together and did. Luckys a talented dude and hes cool. So I hope we keep that going for future movies. Its a cool little crew that weve got.